How to raise attendance at ISU events

TallyT · Feb 11, 2019

lyrichord said:
Maybe they should price the tickets more reasonably? On the Groupon side opposite the judges, with the seats at $69 a pop on Sat and Fri night were sold out for men’s and ladies’ free skate well in advance, whereas the side selling at regular price ~$200 was practically empty.

Right from the time the prices were announced it was clear from everything I read that they were going to have problems selling, I suspect the organisers were rather optimistically thinking they might get Yuzuru yes - which probably would have done it - but probably also Chen AND Shoma - which surely would have done it, look at the battles for Worlds :shocked:

Yuzuru is an absolute phenom both skating and popularity wise, no two ways about it (and the reasons why have always been way more complex than just "he's the best skater!"), but Shoma is also hugely popular in Japan and elsewhere, and I think it should be lauded that he and Boyang (and Rika and the other Japanese ladies, and Sui/Han, and Jason and the rest) could manage to 'sell' the number of overpriced to somewhereIwon'tnameforpoliteness'sake seats that they did.

Arriba627 · Feb 11, 2019

Most of my Groupon tickets were $19 and no added fees. Gala ticket was $39 instead of $59. Seats were good. I bought more expensive tickets for the men's events and the ladies' free. Bottom line, all tickets totalled, it was a LOT of skating for the money. The fact that all the seats are full doesn't make a competition a great one. I thought one of the best things was that many people there had probably never seen skating live before. There was oohing and ahhing for many of the I-spins, Biellmann's, split jumps, and even a 2A or two. :laugh:

TallyT · Feb 11, 2019

Arriba627 said:
The fact that all the seats are full doesn't make a competition a great one

No, but let's be practical. If the competition lost money/was filmed with lots of empty seats, they need to rethink for next time, and seriously. If the sport wants to thrive, it needs to make money (even if not to the Japanese levels). If they want to make money... they need to sell out at least most competitions, especially the big ones. They need stars. Maybe not of Yuzu's/Mao's/Yuna's size, but definitely more of the ones that make serious numbers travel and pay to see them.

There may be another marketing phenom on the way, we don't know... but until then the organisers have to be practical (and remember there's only one of him to go around!)

CanadianSkaterGuy · Feb 11, 2019

LindaTNo1 said:
Empty seats with this competition because Yuzuru was not there. Nobody was really headliners to include Ladies, Pairs and Dance. Empty seats in a struggling fading sport. Yuzu and Javi kept it exciting and thrilling. Shib sibs, Tessa and Scott, among the elite who can bring in the audience seats.

Yeah, totally -- except for, you know, the reigning World silver and bronze medalists in ice dance, the 2018 Olympic silver medalists in pairs, the recent Grand Prix Final silver medalists in pairs, and the recent Grand Prix Final champion in ladies. Nobody. :rolleye:

TallyT · Feb 11, 2019

CanadianSkaterGuy said:
Yeah, totally -- except for, you know, the 2018 Olympic silver medalists in pairs, 2019 GPF silver medalists in pairs, reigning World silver/bronze medalists in ice dance, and the recent Grand Prix Final champion in ladies.

Errrr... which pretty much proves my point, doncha think? (there needs to be a smiley with an evil grin, folks...)

chopinskate · Feb 11, 2019

TallyT said:
(there needs to be a smiley with an evil grin, folks...)

:dev3:

CanadianSkaterGuy · Feb 11, 2019

Arriba627 said:
Most of my Groupon tickets were $19 and no added fees. Gala ticket was $39 instead of $59. Seats were good. I bought more expensive tickets for the men's events and the ladies' free. Bottom line, all tickets totalled, it was a LOT of skating for the money. The fact that all the seats are full doesn't make a competition a great one. I thought one of the best things was that many people there had probably never seen skating live before. There was oohing and ahhing for many of the I-spins, Biellmann's, split jumps, and even a 2A or two.

Agreed. I'd rather see an arena full of fans who are there to see the competition instead of an arena fans who are just there to see one/few skaters and show up to watch one flight. Financially, sure it doesn't matter if you stay for one program or all of them because you've bought the ticket, but that's like people paying to go to a concert to only hear that singer's main song -- true skating fans (as opposed to true skater fans) will watch most or all of the skating competition, and that is a "great competition" as far as attendance goes, IMO. As we saw in Sochi, during the individual men's SP, the arena was packed until Plushenko pulled out -- and then tons of people filed out leaving gaping holes in the stands. Would that have been considered a "great competition" just because the tickets were sold/arena was packed at some point?

Good organizers will be able to promote the value of an audience getting to see a variety of skaters, and even with certain skaters not there -- it's called FOUR continents, not ONE or TWO continents. Not everyone can be a star, but these are all elite athletes, and there's value in everyone's skating and the efforts they put out there. It's disrespectful to their talents and hard work to value this competition as contingent on someone(s) else showing up or not showing up.

Speaking of "great competition" - this had some of the best free skates this season... of the top 12 men's freeskate scores this season, 6 came from Four Continents 2019 (without Chen or Hanyu there) -- including the highest free skate score recorded under the new system. If people decided not to show up to this competition, because their fave(s) wasn't there or whichever other reasons, then they missed out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

icybear · Feb 11, 2019

LindaTNo1 said:
Empty seats with this competition because Yuzuru was not there. Nobody was really headliners to include Ladies, Pairs and Dance. Empty seats in a struggling fading sport. Yuzu and Javi kept it exciting and thrilling. Shib sibs, Tessa and Scott, among the elite who can bring in the audience seats.

Not the whole "XX is not here, this competition is load of crap" thing again.

CanadianSkaterGuy · Feb 11, 2019

TallyT said:
Errrr... which pretty much proves my point, doncha think? (there needs to be a smiley with an evil grin, folks...)

Hmmm... I guess that means Javier being a reigning Olympic medalist and former World Champion = headliner, and Sui/Han being a reigning Olympic medalist (higher colour) and former World Champion (more recently) = chopped liver.

Oh, and, clearly, winning the Grand Prix Final is a meaningless achievement for a would-be 4CC headliner, given that it doesn't seem to matter that Kihira just won that! (insert smiley with evil grin

)

narcissa · Feb 11, 2019

TallyT said:
Errrr... which pretty much proves my point, doncha think? (there needs to be a smiley with an evil grin, folks...)

Unfortunately medals != fans

(But the prices probably had something to do with it. $700+ for All Event tickets?! They put them on Groupon eventually but a bit too late, IMO.)

CanadianSkaterGuy · Feb 11, 2019

LindaTNo1 said:
Empty seats with this competition because Yuzuru was not there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mit0U55EaUw#t=7m23s

Well, at 4CC 2017, even with Yuzu there - and Chen/Uno/Chan/Jin/Brown (arguably the most hotly contested 4CC ever) - there were still plenty of empty seats in the arena. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

andromache · Feb 11, 2019

Many seats were empty because of ticket price (Groupons did not come out very far in advance of the competition) and because it was in the US, where there are not many fans of the sport - and the fans we do have cannot all afford to travel to the West Coast.

I suspect the event would have been more well attended on the East Coast, Canada, or in Asia.

I am surprised at what a contentious debate is happening over audience size.

TallyT · Feb 11, 2019

narcissa said:
Unfortunately medals != fans

(But the prices probably had something to do with it. $700+ for All Event tickets?! They put them on Groupon eventually but a bit too late, IMO.)

That's what I said, the prices were over-optimistic.

CanadianSkaterGuy said:
Hmmm... I guess that means Javier being a reigning Olympic medalist and former World Champion = headliner, and Sui/Han being a reigning Olympic medalist (higher colour) and former World Champion (more recently) = chopped liver.

Oh, and, clearly, winning the Grand Prix Final is a meaningless achievement for a would-be 4CC headliner, given that it doesn't seem to matter that Kihira just won that! (insert smiley with evil grin )

Certainly not meaningless, but not as commercial as it ought to be. Pure economics (and Sui/Han are my pairs favourites by a country mile, so I'm not saying I like it).

Can we get back to where I congratulated Shoma, Jason, Boyang, Rika et al et al for managing to fill the overpriced hall the way they did?

rabidline · Feb 11, 2019

I wouldn't worry too much about the seats, since almost all the top skaters who attended and are considered a ticket draw are on the younger side (still enough time for fans to get familiar with them), and past observations at the skaters' other competitions have shown that they are pretty great seat-fillers on their own. (On the men's side I think it's pretty clear which ones... if not which one). If anything, I think it's better for the 4CC organizer (USFSA?) to evaluate whether they made the right decision with the ticket prices.

I noticed on Twitter that there were plenty of first time attendees too, and I'm glad- the final flight of the men's must have been an experience to witness.

heyheyhey · Feb 11, 2019

CanadianSkaterGuy said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mit0U55EaUw#t=7m23s

Well, at 4CC 2017, even with Yuzu there - and Chen/Uno/Chan/Jin/Brown (arguably the most hotly contested 4CC ever) - there were still plenty of empty seats in the arena. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yea, I have no idea what some are talking about. Unless it’s Nationals or Worlds, arenas always have plenty of empty seats regardless of what skaters are there unless it’s in countries where it’s more than a niche sport (basically Japan & Russia, maybe Canada sometimes). This ain’t the 90s.

Anyways, congrats Shoma! Finally gets his first ISU Gold. Injured no less. Proud of him. The last group did really good job. Hope they save some of that for Worlds.

Bcash · Feb 11, 2019

LindaTNo1 said:
Empty seats with this competition because Yuzuru was not there. Nobody was really headliners to include Ladies, Pairs and Dance. Empty seats in a struggling fading sport. Yuzu and Javi kept it exciting and thrilling. Shib sibs, Tessa and Scott, among the elite who can bring in the audience seats.

Don’t be silly. We are far from the time of Michelle Kwan. None of those you mentioned can fill a stadium in SoCal.

FCSSp4 · Feb 12, 2019

Yuzuru is 2-time OGM now, not the same as he was in 2017 although maybe he'd still be a big audience pull for being OGM around that time.

GP Helsinki sold 20,000 tickets...I think that's even more than Honda Center's seat capacity. There was news about it on Finnish papers.

DSQ · Feb 12, 2019

FCSSp4 said:
Yuzuru is 2-time OGM now, not the same as he was in 2017 although maybe he'd still be a big audience pull for being OGM around that time.

GP Helsinki sold 20,000 tickets...I think that's even more than Honda Center's seat capacity. There was news about it on Finnish papers.

I don’t know if it was 20,000 total spectators but there was a huge amount of Japanese fans in Finland that weekend. I was there on the Sunday of the Men’s FS and Gala in the Helsinki Ice Hall. There were still empty seats on the top level. Though I should point out and the capacity at the area didn’t seem that huge to me - however I really only have been to Rugby and Football stadiums before Helsinki where the capacity is 60,000+.

(I just googled it the Helsinki Ice Hall has a capacity of 8,200.)

FCSSp4 · Feb 12, 2019

DSQ said:
I don’t know if it was 20,000 total spectators but there was a huge amount of Japanese fans in Finland that weekend. I was there on the Sunday of the Men’s FS and Gala in the Helsinki Ice Hall. There were still empty seats on the top level. Though I should point out and the capacity at the area didn’t seem that huge to me - however I really only have been to Rugby and Football stadiums before Helsinki where the capacity is 60,000+.

(I just googled it the Helsinki Ice Hall has a capacity of 8,200.)

Oh it's not that big an arena but do you think more people attended 4CC 2019?

Bcash · Feb 12, 2019

DSQ said:
I don’t know if it was 20,000 total spectators but there was a huge amount of Japanese fans in Finland that weekend. I was there on the Sunday of the Men’s FS and Gala in the Helsinki Ice Hall. There were still empty seats on the top level. Though I should point out and the capacity at the area didn’t seem that huge to me - however I really only have been to Rugby and Football stadiums before Helsinki where the capacity is 60,000+.

(I just googled it the Helsinki Ice Hall has a capacity of 8,200.)

I wouldn’t be surprised that it was mostly Japanese fans. Lots of directs flights from Japan to Helsinki and they are not that long.

How to raise attendance at ISU events

TallyT

Arriba627

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TallyT

CanadianSkaterGuy

TallyT

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CanadianSkaterGuy

icybear

CanadianSkaterGuy

narcissa

CanadianSkaterGuy

andromache

TallyT

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heyheyhey

Bcash

FCSSp4

DSQ

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